well i dont know if this will be any help but when i discovered it it seemed like it might be of interest for this discussion. so i was sitting here brainstorming and i thought to try something i never messed with before. i did a search in my blender folder and found the python script for the "smoke physics" and tried to run the script in the python program.

well i ended up getting an error in the new python window that opened up. unfortunately i am not a coder so i couldnt really go further into it but i figured i might as well mention my new findings here. maybe one of you has the proper coding skill to see if this is worth exploring further.

the only reason i even thought to do this was because of something keffertjuh said in his very first post here. i have andrew prices realistic fire .pdf as well as his Wow Factor book. well i was one of the unlucky ones that got a copy of his Wow Factor book with a bad line of code that made it completely openable so i just thought maybe a similar problem could apply here. he told me there was like 40 of us whose books just had some bad line of stray code that was messed up or not supposed to be there at all.

so in closing sorry for another long winded post but i just thought this was worth looking into. if you want or need some more info let me know and ill see what i can do.

like i said before it could be nothing but it could be useful i dont know.

And i only chose not to include it originally incase noone thought it would be worth exploring plus it was late so i was half asleep typing that. next time though ill rethink how i put my posts together srry about that.

Congrats on fixing your problem man. i think im gonna have to go out and get a new comp to fix my problem. i tried those 2 things you listed and my drivers are already up to date and apparently ive been running on directx 11 so im officially stumped. maybe i should just wait to see if the next blender update helps.

no i ran the code through the "Python program" and even said that in my earlier post about it. im not completely sure how to use the codes in blender itself or i woulda tried that.

Blender uses OpenGL. It does not use DirectX.

i mentioned using DirectX because keffertjuh mentioned reading that updating DirectX could help.

i still dont know how to tell if my video card actually supports OpenGL but if it doesnt i would assume that since you mention blender runs on it that nothing would work properly on blender if my card didnt use it. my comp uses an Intel(R) G33/G31 Express Chipset Family if anyone knows about that one. or maybe thats not even what i need to be looking at if you know let me know. Thanks

Bottom line: Blender scripts MUST be run inside of Blender. You CANNOT run them with the regular Python interpreter.

ah ok understood. now then i tried doing just that a few seconds ago... im not used to working with the scripts so it took a minute to realize i have to use the "console" window, this time i ran the code in blender and got an error on just about every line and some lines from the very top of the code didnt even show up after pasting which i hope means those lines were problem free.

Oh and so i dont forget i dont want u griping at me over another "unproductive" post so...

Actually, what you want is not the console window but to load the script file into a Text Window and execute it there.

See all those lines that say: SyntaxError: unexpected indent? Indentation is critical in Python (nice tutorial at www.python.org). By pasting the code into the console window, you trashed the indentation.

alright i just opened the script up in the "text editor" like i assume you were telling me to do. when i ran the script it didnt seem to do anything though... dont know if it wasnt supposed to or if im missing something now though

Because you might've been doing it wrong...Gotta be sure that's not the cause

BTW the directX thing was mentioned for a game, but I figured it'd be useful for Blender as well somehow...but OpenGL is not needed anyways...it's not integrated into that many video cards yet...just a small portion had them when I bought a new computer at the start of the year...